Bush will ask Congress for $99.7 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for rest of fiscal year 2007 and more than $145 billion for fiscal year 2008, a Bush administration official said on Friday. The administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also said that Bush would estimate the costs for the Iraq war at $50 billion for fiscal year 2009. Bush will unveil those numbers when he presents his annual budget to Congress on Monday. Bush is seeking $145.2 billion in 2008, including $141 billion for the Department of Defense with additional funds sought for the State Department and other agencies for war-related costs. The nearly $100 billion the Bush administration will request for 2007 is less than the Defense Department had initially requested. That money comes on top of $70 billion that Congress approved for the current fiscal year, adding up to a total of $170 billion and making it the most expensive year yet for the war.... http://news.yahoo.com

When it was leaked out that U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex) was forming an exploratory committee to run for the GOP nomination for President, the excitement and electricity on the internet was enough to give full power to Baghdad. Paul has long been a favorite among many on the information super-highway for his paleolibertarian views on foreign and domestic policy and his opposition to the war in Iraq. Many were enthusiastic about the possibility of Paul gaining a broad coalition of support among libertarians, "real" conservatives and maybe even a few leftists as well to form a new electoral coalition. Unfortunately all that euphoria had to be tampered because just a week later another favorite of the internet political posting crowds, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Col.), decided that he was going form his own presidential exploratory committee. I'll give my endorsement of Paul over Tancredo near end of this article. ...http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=19942

When Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley proudly announced on Thursday that two men had been arraigned as a result of the guerrilla marketing campaign in Boston, what she didn't say was how weak the legal charges seem to be. The charges against Sean Stevens, 28, and Peter Berdovsky, 27, according to the attorney general's press release stem from a state law making it a crime to place a hoax device in public. But a closer read of the Massachusetts statute shows that it actually uses the term "infernal machine." (We are not making this up.) For the hapless duo to be convicted under this statute, prosecutors must prove each of four things: (1) Stevens and Berdovsky were the ones who placed the Aqua Teen Hunger Force devices (2) "with the intent to cause anxiety, unrest, fear or personal discomfort." (3) A person must "reasonably" believe that it's (4) a "device for endangering life or doing unusual damage to property, or both, by fire or explosion."...http://news.com.com/2061-10796_3-6155806.html

The situation in Iraq will continue to deteriorate with Iraqi armed forces struggling to assume a greater security role, a long-awaited US intelligence report said today.In a bleak assessment of Iraq, the National Intelligence Estimate said Iraq's growing polarisation, the persistent weakness of its security forces and the ready recourse to violence are driving an increase in communal strife and political extremism. "Unless efforts to reverse these conditions show measurable progress during the term of this estimate, the coming 12-18 months, we assess the overall security situation will continue to deteriorate at rates comparable to the latter of 2006," the report said. A nine-page version of the intelligence estimate was made public today, after the 90-page classified NIE was presented to the US president, George Bush, yesterday. ...http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2004630,00.html

James Lovelock is attracting attention again with his provocative ideas. The former hero of the environmental movement has called for an end to "green romanticism." The only way to delay climate catastrophe, says the environmental guru, is through the massive expansion of nuclear energy. A few days ago, the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking gave a speech in London in which he said that nuclear war no longer poses the only threat to humanity's very existence. According to Hawking, the dangers posed by climate change are now almost equally as great, and we must do everything that is humanly possible if we are to have any hope of averting them. When James Lovelock heard about Hawkings' lecture, three hundred and fifty kilometers away at his remote estate near Cornwall, he exclaimed loudly: "Hawking is underestimating the danger."...http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,463367,00.html

A U.S. Army officer, whose public refusal to go fight in Iraq made him a champion of the anti-war movement, faces a court-martial next week when a military panel could determine the limits of free-speech rights for officers. First Lt. Ehren Watada faces up to four years in prison if convicted on a charge of missing movements and two charges of conduct unbecoming an officer when his court-martial starts on Monday at Fort Lewis, an Army base near Seattle. Watada, a 28-year-old artillery officer, refused to deploy with his brigade to Iraq last summer and called the war illegal and immoral. He refused conscientious-objector status, saying he would fight in Afghanistan but not Iraq. The court-martial gets under way at a time of waning public support for the war in Iraq in the face of President George W. Bush's proposal to send 21,500 more troops to war. Supporters of Watada say he is the first Army officer to publicly refuse to fight in Iraq and refuse conscientious objector status....http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070202/ts_nm/usa_iraq_officer_dc